Shall the geek inherit the Earth?

A bright orange book is causing some waves at the moment. Written by Mark Henderson, until recently science correspondent at The Times, it’s called the Geek Manifesto, and it concerns a subject which will be familiar to readers of The Engineer: the lack of science know-how in politics.

While we’re all familiar with the problem — out of over 600 MPs, only one has a background in research science and just a handful in engineering. But this isn’t Henderson’s main concern. The real issue, he says, is that there’s a lack of understanding of what science really is — a system of enquiry, rather than a body of knowledge — and a lack of willingness to make policy according to evidence, rather than just ideology or the results of focus groups.

Engineers, of course, are completely familiar with the idea of evidence-based decision making — no decision can be made without evidence that it’s correct, and that evidence is generally based on data, whether gathered through computer simulation or through direct experiment. Politicians argue that other factors have to be brought to bear, including public opinion — gained, all too often, via the barometer of the media, which is as unscientific a method as you could possibly imagine.

Politicians have always been suspicious of scientists — Winston Churchill famously said that they should be on tap, not on top. It might be because there’s always the possibility that the evidence is going to disagree with the politics. In a discussion on Radio 4’s Start the Week programme, former Home Secretary David Blunkett said that there’s always a temptation to try to find a scientist who agrees with you in the first place. But there’s no doubt that there isn’t enough evidence used in politics, and the example of engineering would be a good one for study.

It’s all very well for us to say that there aren’t enough scientists and engineers in politics, but the problem with that is that politicians are a self-selecting pool — you can only vote for the people who stand, and only people who are interested can run for office in the first place. The way politics is at the moment, you can hardly blame engineers and scientists from being discouraged from going into the bear pit. But perhaps if the current crop of politicians take the time to read The Geek Manifesto (copies are currently being sent to every MP’s office as a result of an online pledge campaign) and, even better, take some of its ideas on board, it might change the atmosphere around policy-making enough to make it a more attractive place for those of a technical mindset.

On the other hand, the record of scientists as MPs hasn’t always been a glowing one. No less a figure than Isaac Newton was an MP (for Cambridge University, back when it had one). He spent a year in the House of Commons, and spoke once. He asked someone to close a window.

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Politicians usually come from the talking classes [lawyers, media types & arts based academia]. Hence they will be largely ignorant of science & engineering. Given that & their need to be popular come election time, it’s no surprise evidence based decision making takes second place to political expediency.

I suspect that Isaac Newton was waiting for a topic worth of his comment! Then as now, parliament is hampered by a voting system designed to select individuals, and a government based on political parties (that you cannot vote for directly). The party system constrains MPs (most of the time) in their choice of decision. So in reality, their choice is dictated by ‘the party’; hardly the way that democracy was intended to work in The Mother of Parliaments.
Unless a large body of scientists/technologists/engineers all entered Parliament at the same time and formed their own party, they won’t create a large enough power-block to have any sway over the existing parties; who seem good at generating heat (hot air), but poor at generating forward motion. The engineers would at least be able to harness the heat and create some motive power!

Unfortunately politics and science/engineering are at two opposite ends of a decision making philosophy. Politics is more akin to religion where facts take second place to (irrational) belief.

The article is so right in that the political process is skewed to getting election results, little things like facts aren’t usually allowed to get in the way.

But belief is also part of a decision making process, for example I believe the HS2 is a waste of money and could be better spent on other infrastructure projects that would benefit more than the elite few, other engineers will of course disagree, neither is right or wrong from an engineering perspective, just right or wrong from a belief point of view.

….and there lies the problem, it always
becomes a human decision – politics!

R V Jones’ excellent book ‘Most Secret War’ is a splendid account of his experiences as a scientific advisor to Churchill. I wonder what the outcome of the war might have been if their roles had been reversed…

Stuart I previously commented on this subject here: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/opinion/comment/on-the-outside-shouting-in/1012813.article and also whilst not having read Mark Henderson’s book – I have recently seen him speak on the subject in Cambridge. I agree with him that there’s a lack of understanding of what science really is. However he did also say that the whole story isn’t just about evidence-the short example he gave being that having a 7pm curfew (based on ‘the evidence’) would reduce crime drastically. Of course the impact on general liberties would be draconian and not acceptable to most people. This is the messy politics bit where evidence needs to be balanced against morals etc. It is not all data.

Without repeating the whole of my previous comment this part is I believe important enough to so do “The long hard work involves not standing outside society, posing as honest ‘experts’, but to get involved with the messy real world, which may take a long time, and is an open ended project”.

Stuart, you say that ‘The way Politics is at the moment you can hardly blame engineers and scientists from being discourage for going into the bear pit’. Well yes you can. Engineers and Scientists are not a homogenous ‘special group’ who should use their familiarity with the ‘idea of evidence based decision making’ to get their ideas taken up by government. Hopefully they are primarily individuals with a range of ideas, cultures and morals & ethics (backed perhaps by a better understanding of logic and mathematics). There will be left engineers, right engineers, green engineers etc. the same as with any other group or profession. I don’t see why Engineers should stand outside the general duty to raise the standard of politics by getting stuck in, using whatever ‘special’ skills and insights they may have collectively to do that.

Finally, If there is one specific skill a well trained engineer does have which should help them be a good politician (once in power) – it is surely how to effectively make trade-offs. We just need to include moral, cultural and economic trade offs in our tool box.

Science is about discovering facts whether or not we like the facts we discover is by-the-by. Perhaps another phrase for ‘the facts’ is ‘the truth’. Politics and the truth have never been bedfellows.
What politician is ever going to tell ‘the truth’, for instance, about the NHS – namely, no matter how much money we throw at it, some treatments will not be available. Not likely!
By the time any Scientist or Engineer has climbed the greasy pole of party politics high enough to have any influence, that person will have long been forced to disassociate from the truth.

It’s the classic situation of the country being run by accountants (and not very good ones at that). I’ve been trying to improve public transport round my local (and rural) area but everyone I tried to speak to basically said it came back to funding but failed to see the point of a regionalised scheme to subsidise the less used (but probably even more necessary) rural routes from more profitable ones.

I tried to suggest an oyster-card-type scheme for here in the North East but told that this was already being developed and was going to take about four years…which nicely co-incides with when this government will inevitably be kicked out and it will be someone else’s responsibility.

We just talk and talk amongst ourselves about how engineering is misunderstood and held in low esteem, but seem to do little else about it. How can we change the publics’ attitude to and appreciation of what engineering is and how it improves all our lives? Who will take the lead? It would be lengthy process to change attitudes. Any ideas?